Abstract
After the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed in Germany, various measures limiting contact between people were introduced across the country. The implementation of these measures varied between jurisdictions and potentially had a negative impact on the psychological well-being of many people. However, the prevalence, severity, and type of symptoms of psychological burden has not been documented in detail. In the current study, we analysed various self-reported symptoms of psychological burden in a German sample. The dataset was collected between April 8th and June 1st, 2020, through an online survey measuring psychological burden using the ICD-10-symptom rating scale. More than 2,000 individuals responded to the survey, with a total of 1,459 complete datasets. Data was then sampled to compare (1) the new data to an existing demographically comparable reference dataset including a total of 2,512 participants who did not undergo any kind of contact restrictions or other pandemic measurements, and (2) psychological burden in two different German states. In line with recent observations from Germany, Italy, China, Austria and Turkey, we found a high prevalence of depressive symptoms in comparison to the reference sample. Furthermore, we found a high prevalence of eating disorder and compulsion symptoms. Especially younger adults and women reported a higher symptom severity compared to other groups during our measurement period. However, no difference between the two states in psychological burden was found.
Highlights
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020 due to the COrona VIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
The items with the highest mean scores in the survey sample were “I feel down and depressed” (M = 1.25, SD = 1.04) for the depression subscale, “I try to avoid these harmless frightening situations” (M = 0.76, SD = 1.09) for the anxiety subscale, “I try to resist recurring, seemingly senseless thoughts and actions, but often don’t succeed” (M = 0.54, SD = 1.00) for the compulsion subscale, “I worry about having a serious physical illness” (M = 0.37, SD = 0.80) for the somatization subscale and “I spend a lot of time thinking of ways to lose weight” (M = 0.90, SD = 1.21) for the eating disorder subscale
We found significant differences between the reference and the COVID-19 sample in depressive symptoms, compulsive symptoms and symptoms of eating disorder, as displayed in Table 2 and Figure 3, with higher burden in the COVID-19 sample
Summary
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency of international concern on 30 January 2020 due to the COrona VIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). Such a declaration implies that a disease can potentially have a serious impact on public health, including mental health [World Health Organization (WHO), 2020] Because of this declaration, many governments enacted public health interventions such as physical distancing, canceling leisure time activities, mandatory breaks for schools and universities, travel restrictions and obligatory quarantine for anyone tested positive for the disease. Many governments enacted public health interventions such as physical distancing, canceling leisure time activities, mandatory breaks for schools and universities, travel restrictions and obligatory quarantine for anyone tested positive for the disease Some of these measures restricted personal movement and Psychological Burden During COVID-19 may have led to social isolation. It is not surprising that the prevalence of depression, and of other mental disorders, has increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implementation of measures to restrict social contact (e.g., Tang et al, 2020)
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